black steel in the hour of chaos

Author/speaker Adisa Banjoko, Rahman of the San Quentin Project Trust, and (in the background) a hardcore lady that, much like Bone Crusher, is "Never Scared" (yeah, right!).



Adisa builds with Norteno inmates in a manner that turned out to be deeper than he would have known. . . (photos by Abraham Menor)

Here it is! I've been talking about the wild process of its creation for a month here on r2b: My only 1500 word feature story in history to spawn a 3000 word behind-the-scenes story as well!

"Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos"(from SF Weekly)

In case you didn't already read my long-winded backstory, here's "Love From San Quentin" and "Love Aftermath."

Even with all of that said, there are still so many nuances to our San Quentin visit that got lost with editing and space constraints. . . we didn't get to thank the brothers that we knew by first name that were so amazing to us there (Rahman, Ernest, Leonard, and Kevin in particular). To squeeze it all down to a paragraph and a half was a wee bit painful. But thank heaven for bloggery!